Classic Films


Feature Writer: Dan Lalande

Classic Film - it's a catch-all term these days but true movie fans know what it really refers to: that perfect and prolific period from The Jazz Singer to A Hard Day's Night, from All Quiet On The Western Front to All About Eve, from Frankenstein to From Here To Eternity.

Relive the Studio Era - film noire, Westerns, gangster pictures, melodramas and comedies - through profiles, book reviews, DVD news, and more. If you know the color of Harpo Marx's first wig, if you can name the last film John Ford shot in Monument Valley, if you went all atingle when Warner Bros released its gangster collection on DVD, then by all means, line up behind the velvet rope.

Check out my articles, blog and post in the discussions or email me with your own golden oldies.

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All About Eve, AMPAS
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Dan Lalande

Notes On A Life

In: Classic Films (general)

She has subsisted in her husband's shadow - but with this delicate, introspective and textural journal, Eleanor Coppola comes to the forefront. more...

Lonely Are The Brave on DVD

In: Film Westerns

Star Kirk Douglas has called Dalton Trumbo's offbeat, contemporary Western the perfect screenplay. It isn't exactly but it is something admirable and unique. more...

High Noon on DVD

In: Film Westerns

With the making of High Noon, writer Carl Foreman, director Fred Zinneman, and actor Gary Cooper revolutonized the Western more...

James Bond's Ian Fleming at 100

In: Classic Films (general)

The James Bond films are the most successful series in movie history...but have they killed the very form that's spawned them? more...

Frank Sinatra Anniversary

In: Classic Films (general)

It's been ten years since ol' blue eyes checked out of the saloon - leaving a handful of memorable dramatic performances more...

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Dan Lalande

May 16, 2008

Perfectly Frank

Frank Sinatra provided the soundtrack to a union as complicated as those that were his inspiration


He was the greatest romantic singer of the twentieth century.

Small wonder, then, that my wife and I had our biggest fight to his music.

One rainy afternoon, back when we were just dating, I entered the car she was driving and informed her that it was all over. It wasn't of course but I desperately wanted a specific reaction, namely, a "don't do this to me...I love you...I can't bear to be without you."

I was looking for her to violate her stalwart character in the most dramatic and inconceivable way possible.

This was something she had never done - not when her parents brought her to the brink of vulnerability with the Greek drama familiar to so many families, not when her troubled sibling had asked her to serve as his human shield, not when school or work tried to cripple her with dire commitment.

So if she did it for me, just me, I would truly know that she loved me.

Surely Frank Sinatra, egging her on through the stereo, would inspire her to action. Frank, half tough guy, half sentimentalist, like her. He had overcome the fickleness of show business, had built palaces in the desert, had elected a president. A man of such milestones, of such persuasion, could move one even such as she.

'"Fine," she replied fliply. "It's over."

I don't know which it was that was filling the sudden silence: the singular pounding of the rain against the windshield or the pounding of my disappointed heart against my chest. Where had Frank disappeared to? Where was his emphatic purr, not long ago filling the entire car?

The tape, like our relationship, had ended unexpectedly.

Frank could sing like he did because he was no stranger to heartache. He had company now, another fallen romantic made hard by reality.

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